K2 ServerSave Installation and User Guide

Solution

K2 ServerSave Installation and User Guide

Chapter 1: Introduction

1.1 What is K2 ServerSave?

Welcome to the K2 ServerSave Server Edition User Guide. This guide briefly describes the K2 ServerSave Application Suite and how the components work together. Installation and configuration of each individual application is covered in this guide. Additionally each application in the suite has a built in Help section located in the File Menu in order to assist with application specific features, usage, and information.

The K2 ServerSave Application Suite consists of these applications:

Online Backup & Recovery Manager - designed specifically to backup large image files created by Bare Metal ImageCreator, this program is typically installed on a *staging machine*. The backup accounts can also be monitored using the Central Management Portal which is available on the partner dashboard.

Bare Metal ImageCreator licensing is based on the number of physical servers, virtual machines, Hyper-V Servers, and PCs too that you want to backup as an image. For example, if you are using K2 ServerSave to backup 100 computers, you will require 100 Bare Metal ImageCreator licenses.

Online Backup & Recovery requires no license to backup folders/files on Windows systems. You just need enough online storage to accommodate the requirements of all of your backup requirements across all computers that you need to backup.

Chapter 2: System Requirements

To run properly, K2 ServerSave must run on systems having minimum specifications, which we list below.

Supported Operating Systems

Windows XP and later

Windows® Server 2003 and later:

Support for Windows® 32 and 64 bit Operating Systems

Supported File Systems

FAT32, FAT32X, NTFS and Dynamic Disks.

Chapter 3: Installing K2 ServerSave

3.1 Choosing Components

K2 ServerSave is a suite of applications that offer many options for backup and recovery. K2 ServerSave offers two choices for the foundation of your backup solution. You can backup individual files, or capture an image of an entire disk. When considering which one is best, ask yourself:

Do I need to choose the files and folders I want to backup?

In the event of a catastrophic disk failure, do I need to retain the settings in the operating system?

Do I have a small amount of local disk space to store my backup images?

Is this backup for an email server, database, or back-end server?

If the answers to all of these questions is no, then Online Backup may be adequate for you. Otherwise, you should choose BareMetal ImageCreator along with Online Backup & Recovery Manager (which sends images to the cloud) to create a disk image and backup the entire disk.

If your backup requirements are more complex, then we recommend that you install Bare Metal BareMetal ImageCreator and Online Backup & Recovery Manager. The Central Management Portal gives you the power to monitor the backup activity on the machines installed with the Online Backup & Recovery Manager. For example, if you’re backing up a Microsoft™ Exchange Email server and would like precise recovery and migration control, then you will want to install and configure Exchange Granular Recovery.

IMPORTANT:Online Backup & Recovery Manager must be installed and run first, prior to Exchange Granular Recovery.

3.2 Download ServerSave

Then follow these steps to install and become familiar with the K2 ServerSave installer:

When the login window appears, simply login with the Username and Password for your account (you may find these in your welcome e-mail message).

The ServerSave Applications Suite will appear. Initially, all of the application icons will have a Not Installed status above the icon. Upon completion of installation, configuration, and reboot the Status will change to Installed.

Figure 2: ServerSave Portal Window

Along the top of the window, you’ll find two additional tabs, Setup Backup and Support & Manage.

Click on the Setup Backup tab to view images that represent several different backup scenarios. Clicking on these images will display windows with buttons that launch the same installers found on the Applications tab.

Click the Support & Manage tab to find links for support and ordering more space or licenses. You can also view your account summary. Click the Go to Web Portal link to access your account page.

Return to the Applications tab to begin installing applications.

Chapter 4: Bare Metal ImageCreator

The chapter covers the installation, configuration and use of the Bare Metal ImageCreator application.

4.1 Installing Bare Metal ImageCreator

Follow these steps to install this application:

First, ensure that you do not have other VSS-enabled backup applications installed or configured. If this is the case, then please uninstall and reboot before proceeding with Bare Metal ImageCreator install.

If Backup Exec must be installed, reinstall it after successfully installing Shadow Protect.

Click the Bare Metal ImageCreator icon in the ServerSave installer.

In the next window, click the Download button. You will see the progress of the download until it reaches the end, after which a message will appear indicating “Download Completed.”

Click OK to return the ServerSave Installer,

Next, click the Install App button to launch the installation wizard:

Click the Next button to continue, and then choose the option to accept the terms in the license agreement and click Next once more.

If you want the simplest installation, choose the Complete setup option.

You must Restart/Reboot in order to complete the installation.

After rebooting the computer, launch the application by choosing Start > All Programs > Shadow Protect > Shadow Protect Server. After a brief moment, the application window will appear.

IMPORTANT: We recommend that you use continuous incremental when setting up your very first backup. See the ShadowProtect Help Menu to learn how to use this application to perform backups. Also schedule the server to be rebooted at a later time prior to running any backups.

Setup your first backup with ShadowProtect

1. First you will need to decided where you want to save you Image backups. We suggest a Staging Machine, please read here: Staging Machine

2nd Option - Setup a Shared Folder on a NAS, then follow instructions for backing up files on NAS to K2 Cloud using a Staging Machine

3rd Option - External Drive, preferably this can be plugged into a Staging Machine than your production server. However if you must, you can plug into your production server. Follow the instructions on Staging Machine to backup images on External drive to the K2 Cloud.

BEST PRACTICE! Use a shared folder on a Windows PC/Server as a backup destination. To save extra money, use an existing employee’s PC as the backup destination. This will increase performance when:

Select the tab labeled Wizards > Click on the section labeled Backup > A pop up window will appear that reads “Welcome to the Backup Wizard” select the Next button.

The next window will be labeled Volumes to Back Up. Place a Check Mark on the desired Production Disks/Partitions for Image Backup (do not select the box labeled System Reserved, as this is not needed for recovery.’)

At the Backup Name and Destination window select your desired back up path by clicking the button labeled Browse, then browse to the target location and select the Open button. Your target location should now be listed under the Select network location section. Click Next to continue.

At the next window labeled Specify the backup schedule you will want to locate the section labeled Schedule and select the last option labeled Continuous Incrementals.

Click Next to accept recommended setup or modify if desired (See bullet point below)

For VSS Incremental Backup (top portion) place a check on the days to perform one incremental backup per day.

If you require more than one incremental backup per day, configure additional incremental backups accordingly. It’s not necessary to place a check on the same day for VSS Incremental Backup (top portion) and additional incremental backups (bottom portion), only choose one or the other.

At the next window labeled Options place a check on Split image file and select desired size. > At this point you have the option to select Advanced backup options by clicking on the radial button labeled Advance. To run the default back up simply click the button labeled Next. >

A window labeled Wizard Summary will now appear. Place a check on the button labeled Execute now if you would like to run your initial backup now. If left unchecked back up will occur at the scheduled time.

Click the Finish button to complete. After selecting Finish, the Backup Wizard will disappear and you will return to the main Shadow Protect console.

2. Setup Email Reports

In the File menu, select the Options dropdown, and then choose Agent Options.

The Agent Options table will appear and allow you to enter SMTP settings, email to address(es) and email alert settings. Press OK upon completion. You will now return to the main Shadow Protect console. At this point you have the option of further exploring the console or closing it and moving on to the next step in the installation guide.

To learn more about the application please select the Help drop down from the File Menu and choose the option labeled Contents. This will launch our helpful user guide which provides valuable information.

4.2 Hardware Independent Restore

How to perform a Hardware Independent Restore ( HIR )

Situation:

The purpose of this document is to give a step by step guide on how to perform a hardware independent restore from one system to another. This same process can be used to create a virtual machine from the ShadowProtecti image. Create the virtual machine first then boot the virtual machine from the ShadowProtect recovery CD. This is a faster process then doing the VMware conversion.

Solution:

Due to the large number of images and tables available in the PDF, this solution will only be available in PDF format. Please download the attached knowledgebase article for your viewing.

Online Backup & Recovery Manager is a tool for configuring automatic file and folder backups for storage in the K2 ServerSave cloud. After choosing files and folders for backup, you configure a backup schedule. You can set the backup to run hourly, daily (our recommendation), weekly, or monthly.

Continuous Incremental Backups

Initially, the backup will copy each and every one of the files and folders you specify. After that, any subsequent backups will only backup items that have been changed since the last backup. This is what we call continuous incremental backup.

On-the-Spot backups

You can also perform immediate, on-the-spot backups, which might be important—especially after making valuable changes to some of your files. And, at any time, you can restore your files and folders-either by choosing individuals file or an entire backup set. Learn more in the sections below.

This chapter covers the installation, configuration and use of the Online Backup & Recovery Manager application. Naturally, we begin with installation.

5.1 Installing Online Backup & Recovery Manager

In this section we describe how to install the Online Backup & Recovery Manager application. Please take the following into consideration:

If EGR support is your only requirement for this tool, then it’s unnecessary to perform any additional configuration of Online Backup & Recovery Manager after you complete the installation.

Follow these steps to install Online Backup & Recovery Manager:

To install this application, click the Online Backup & Recovery Manager icon located in the ServerSave Application suite . An installation window will appear, click the Download button. You will see the progress of the download until it reaches the end, after which a message will appear indicating “Download Completed.”

Click OK to return the ServerSave Installer, and then click the Install App button to launch the installation wizard.

After a few moments, a window will appear to prompt you to install the application:

If the check box is empty, place a check in it to acknowledge that you accept the terms of the license agreement.

Though we don’t recommend it, you can opt to click the Change button to choose a different installation folder. If you choose to change the install location, please only change the drive letter.

Click the Install button to launch the wizard, which may take a few minutes to run.

You’ll know the application is ready when the login window appears (see figure):

Figure 6: The Online Backup & Recovery Manager login window

Here, enter your K2 ServerSave Username and Password and click the Submit button. After a few moments, the main window will appear, confirming that your installation is complete.

IMPORTANT: If Exchange Granular Recovery is your only requirement for this tool, it is unnecessary to perform any additional configurations on Online Backup & Recovery Manager. You may simply close the application now.

5.2 Launching Online Backup & Recovery Manager

To launch Online Backup & Recovery Manager, you can either:

Click the OnlineBackup & Recovery Manager icon in the ServerSave Portal, or

The figure below shows the main window for Online Backup & Recovery Manager:

Figure 7: The Online Backup & Recovery Manager Main Window

Take a moment to survey all of the elements in this window:

The Backup, Restore and Support tabs

The Menu in the upper left corner

The contents of the Backup tab are visible when the window first appears

In the Backup tab, you’ll see the Setup Online Backup and Backup Now buttons

Also, take note of the My Account section-which includes a link to the Web Portal.

5.3 Configuring Online Backup

Setting up an online backup with Online Backup & Recovery Manager is quite simple: you choose files and folders, decide upon a schedule, and optionally choose to receive email reports. Follow these steps to configure an online backup:

In the Backup tab, click the Setup Online Backup button.

In the window that appears, you can select folders and / or individual files that you want to backup. See the figure below for visual cues. In consideration of performance and space constraints, we do not recommend backing up an entire drive with Online Backup & Recovery Manager (e.g., C:\).

When you’re happy with the file and folder selections, click the Next button in the lower right corner of the window.

IMPORTANT: We strongly recommend against backing up the entire C:\ drive, as there are many system files that are unnecessary for recovery.

Uncheck Backup at the end of this wizard if you would rather wait to perform the backup at the time you schedule.

Uncheck Backup automatically without user intervention if you would rather receive a prompt before the backup begins. If you leave a check in this box, the backup will start automatically at the time you schedule. We recommend this for your first backup.

Check the box Backup even when Windows user is not logged on if you would like the backup to run when the computer is running with no active user logged in.

Notice the Frequency and Timing sections. The default Frequency is Daily, and the Timing is set to the time at which Online Backup & Recovery Manager was launched. You can change the Timing by editing the hour, minutes and AM/PM setting. (If you desire to stop the backup after a specific number of hours, you can edit the corresponding Windows Scheduled Task after configuring the backup.)

If you prefer, you can change the frequency to Hourly and then select the number of Hours indicating how often you want the backup to occur. It’s important to realize that large, frequent backup sets may decrease the performance of the computer for other applications.

Alternatively, you could choose Weekly and then choose a time and day, or choose Monthly and select the time of day and the day of the month on which to perform the backup.

Optionally, you can check the box Send email reports at the end of backup to send a backup status report to the email address that you specify the text box immediately below (every time a backup completes).

Click the Finish button to complete the schedule setup.

5.4 Immediate Backup

If you want to perform a backup now, simply go to the Backup tab and click the Backup Now button. This backup will go into online storage along with any other backups. (It will appear in the listing between the backups that run on the regular schedule.)

5.5 Restoring Files

It’s also quite easy to restore your files. Follow these steps:

Click the Restore tab, and then click the Online Restore button.

In the next window that appears, you can specify filters to search for a specific backup set.

The most important setting is the date. Move the calendar arrows and locate a date that has bold font. The search will look for all backups that were taken on or before this date.

NOTE: This process may take up to 60 minutes for backup accounts containing 1 million files or more. However, the second time you want to restore, the refresh process will happen much more quickly.

You can also restrict your search by size (such as > 1,000 KB) and file type (such as Movie Clip, *mpeg)

To be even more specific in your search, you can also enter all or part of a filename.

Click Next to continue. On the next panel, you’ll encounter a listing of the files and folders that meet the search criteria from the previous panel. Choose the specific files and / or folders you need to restore, or simply check the topmost checkbox to restore the entire backup.

Click Next to move on to the last step. Choose either the Default location or New location. The default location is the original path of the files. If you choose New location, then also click the ellipsis button (…) to select a new folder location.

NOTE: If you are going to restore and entire folder with “Original path”, then we recommend that you choose a root drive letter. This will ensure that the names for your recovered files do not exceed the Windows character limit of 256. A folder will be created with the system name of the data you are restoring.

Optionally, you can indicate that you want to Save new location as Default, which will save the new folder location as the restoration path for this backup set.

Also, you can uncheck the box Include original path. This will cause the restore operation to place all of the files into a single folder, instead of preserving the original folder structure.

Click Finish to begin the restore operation.

When the restore is complete, a window will appear to display the results. You’ll see a count of the files successfully recovered and also a count of any files that were unrecoverable. Click the Details button to view the restore report, or click the Close button to exit.

5.6 My Account and the Web Portal

On the right side of the Online Backup & Recovery Manager main window, you’ll see the My Account section. There you will find several items of important information:

Used Space – This is the amount of space that all of your backups presently consume in your K2 ServerSave account

Available Space – This is the amount of space remaining in your K2 ServerSave account.

Expiration Date – This is the date on which you should renew your K2 ServerSave license.

Last Backup Date – Displays the date of the very last backup sent to the cloud by Online Backup & Recovery Manager.

5.7 Options Menu

In the upper left corner of the Online Backup & Recovery Manager main window, you’ll see the Menu drop-down list. Click on the arrow to display a list of options:

Classic View – Select this menu choice to switch to the classic interface.

Options – Choose this menu item to launch the Options window, which we describe in detail below.

About – Select this item to view information about the version of Online Backup & Recovery Manager copy that you are running on your computer.

5.8 Online Backup & Recovery Manager Options

In the dropdown Menu (upper left corner of the Online Backup & Recovery Manager main window), click the Options item to view the Options window. There you’ll encounter a number of categories, each of which we describe below. When you’re done configuring these settings, click the Save button to commit your changes and exit. Click Cancel to discard any changes.

NOTE: You won’t be able to change your password if a backup is running.

5.8.3 Email Backup Reports

You can change the email address to which backup reports are sent. To do so, click the Email Backup Reports item in the listing and then enter the new address in the text box. You can also uncheck the box if you no longer want any reports to be sent at all.

5.8.4 Folders

Online Backup & Recovery Manager uses several local folders, each of which you may change to meet your local storage needs. In order to access these folders select the Folders option from the left hand pane. The options listed below will be listed. Local backup folder – default location for local backup application

Recovery folder – this folder will contain all of the files that you restore (see the Recovering Files section above).

Temp folder – this is a temporary storage area for the Online Backup & Recovery Manager application.

This section allows you the option to include or exclude file types by extension.

By default the Do Not Use Filters option is set.

In order to make changes select the desired action and enter the appropriate file type in the provided field.

Only backup files with the following extensions: By selecting this option you will be able to manually enter the type of files you want to be backed up. By selecting this option you are directing the application to only include the file types listed by you. All other file types will be excluded.

Don’t back up files with the following extensions: By selecting this option you will be able to manually exclude file types that you do not want backed up. By selecting this option you are directing the application to exclude the file types listed by you. All other file types will be included.

Click Monitoring settings to monitor a backup account by placing a check next to the “check box” and choose “Save”.

Chapter 6: Exchange Granular Recovery (EGR)

This chapter covers the installation, configuration, and use of the Exchange Granular Recovery (EGR) application.

6.1 Installing EGR

— Important: You must install Online Backup & Recovery Manager prior to the installation of EGR.

— EGR is designed to run from a Windows®-based workstation and uses native Microsoft® Messaging APIs (MAPI) to communicate to the Exchange Server, ensuring reliable and consistent operation of your server.

— For MAPI to initialize properly, Office Outlook must be installed and configured on the workstation to connect to an Exchange Server.

When connecting to an Exchange Server 2007 (through SP3) or Exchange Server 2010 (including SP1), Outlook 2003 or Outlook 2007 must be installed and configured.

Note: Only 32-bit versions of Outlook 2010 are supported.

In order to start the installation process we must first save license file onto your computer. Locate the Exchange Granular Recovery icon in the ServerSave portal and click the License Details option.

In the small window that appears, click the link that reads Save your license to the file.

In the Save a License File window that appears, choose a folder (or click New folder located on the top left hand corner of the window to create a new folder), enter an easy-to-remember File name, and click the Save button to return to the ServerSave Portal.

Click the Exchange Granular Recovery icon and then, in the next window, click the Download button. You will see the progress of the download until it reaches the end and a message will appear indicating “Download Completed.”

Click OK to return the ServerSave Portal, and then click the Install App button to launch the installation wizard (which may take several minutes to load).

Click the Next button to continue, and then click Yes accept the terms in the license agreement and click Next once more.

In the next step, enter the User Name and also a Company Name. If you only want this software to be available for this operating system user account, then choose the radio button option Only for me; otherwise leave the default

When you are sure of these changes, click the Next button to move onto the next step in the wizard.

In the next step, you may optionally choose a different destination folder by clicking the Browse button, choosing a folder, and clicking OK.

Click the Back and Next buttons to review the installation settings.

Click the Next button to launch the installation script.

After a few moments, a window will appear to indicate that the installation is complete. Click the Finish button. If you are taken back to the Download/ Install window close the window to return to the ServerSave portal. If the EGR still appears as being not installed close the ServerSave portal and open it back up. A reboot may be needed in some instances.

Now, you’ll need to activate the software by finding linking the license key file you saved to your hard drive. From the ServerSave Portal click the Exchange Granular Recovery icon. The main window will open, and also a second smaller window will appear to indicate that the license file has not been installed.

If you know the location of the license file on your computer, then click the License Info button, to display this dialog window: Click the button with the ellipsis (…), locate the license file, and then click the Close button.

IMPORTANT: See the Exchange Granular Recovery User Guide to learn how to use this application to perform backups.